Ballot-tampering charges fly in S. Texas recount

Incumbent loses lead after untallied votes found on rival's turf

April 3, 2004
By PETE SLOVER

SEGUIN, Texas - The lore of South Texas election shenanigans grew this week
as teams of lawyers and politicos dashed county to county in a congressional
vote-counting dispute reminiscent of Florida 2000 - or even Box 13.

The incumbent, Democratic Rep. Ciro Rodriguez of San Antonio, has seen his
lead evaporate after recounts turned up previously untallied votes - akin,
his backers say, to the suspect crate of late-discovered ballots that
clinched Lyndon B. Johnson's 1948 Senate win.

...

An 11-county recount this week showed that primary foe Henry Cuellar of
Laredo erased a 145-vote deficit and moved ahead by 203 votes, nearly all
of them on solid Cuellar political turf, the border counties of Webb
and Zapata.

Mr. Cuellar's staff attributed the vote swing to human fatigue and
mechanical woes similar to those that plagued the chad-pocked presidential
recount four years ago in Florida.

...

Experts said that whatever explanation is ultimately deemed true - probably
in court - the conflict serves as a reminder of the fragility of the voting
process, that a perfect election is only as plausible as a flawless machine,
or a faultless human, to run it.

...

Optical Scanning

All but two of the 11 counties in the sprawling 28th Congressional District
use optical scanning in which voters pencil in a spot to mark their
preference - the technology used in 148 of 254 Texas counties.

The initial tally in the March 9 primary showed Mr. Rodriguez ahead by 145
votes out of more than 48,000 cast. In the recount of counties other than
Webb and Zapata, both men gained votes, and Mr. Rodriguez boosted his edge
by one vote, to 146.

Here's what has raised most of the questions:

* In Zapata County, the machine that reads the ballots had broken down on
election night. ...

...

* In Webb County, which includes Mr. Cuellar's hometown of Laredo, a
puzzling outcome: The total number of ballots increased by 115 - all of
which went to Mr. Cuellar. He also gained 62 ballots that previously had been
counted by machine as blank, while Mr. Rodriguez picked up no such votes.

Mr. Rodriguez's lawyers said there could be no explanation other than fraud
and tampering, noting the Webb County disparity and that the new Cuellar
votes all came out of a segregated pool of early votes. They plan to ask a
judge as early as next week to toss the election results.

Several university experts said that mechanical failings and corrections
usually harm or benefit both sides randomly - in the same proportion as
the overall vote - and that statistically, Mr. Rodriguez should have gotten
at least some of the late-added votes since he won one-sixth of the initial
Webb County tally.

Mr. Cuellar's attorneys attributed the new votes to the recount team's
separation of "clumped" ballots that were stuck together and not counted
by the optical scanning machine on election night.

Mr. Rodriguez, who has not conceded, responded that the recount added
three-quarters of 1 percent more ballots to the initial total, far in
excess of expected "clumping," and that the multiple passes performed on
election night would have detected those problems.

...

An expert familiar with the brand and model of voting machines used in
Webb County agreed with the Rodriguez camp, saying that the expected number
of miscounts for all reasons - including clumping - would be a fraction of
that reported in Webb County.

'Shocked to see'

"I know how the anti-clumping mechanism of that machine works. It's pretty
good," said Douglas Jones, an associate computer science professor at the
University of Iowa and a member of the state board that certifies voting
machines there. "I would be shocked to see clumping like that."

He said clumping could increase if poll workers failed between elections to
change a wide rubber belt used to separate ballots. "They'd have to go for a
long time before it got that bad," he said.

Punch-card technology, soon to be illegal under federal laws passed after
the Florida recount - proved among the most reliable in the congressional
recount: Hays County, the only venue using the punch card, reported just a
one-vote change.

The only county with a perfect recount, matching election night returns:
tiny McMullen County, where 108 voters circled their choices on a paper
ballot for counting by hand. That method will still be permitted under
the new federal law.